


Tenacious Protectors

by RockPaperbackScissors



Series: Thane x Shepard [7]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Regret, Self-Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 02:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8127454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RockPaperbackScissors/pseuds/RockPaperbackScissors
Summary: Following his duel with Kai Leng, Thane reconsiders the choices he has made.





	

The humans have a belief that in the moment of death, life will flash before their eyes with perfect clarity. The drell have no such belief, perhaps because their lives are spent with such memories close at hand. Thane has always wondered what he would find when he faced that moment himself. 

What he discovers, now, is a vacuum where memory had once been. He can’t recall why he’s sitting on the ground, why his chest feels cold, why Shepard’s face is filling his field of vision. 

“Don’t go.” She sounds as though she’s calling to him from across a great chasm. He struggles to glean meaning from the movement of her lips. “You can’t go.”

“Shepard,” says a second voice from an even greater distance. Thane’s thoughts are floating off like leaves in an updraft, but he latches on to one long enough to recognize the voice: EDI. “Back-calculations based on his tactical decisions suggest that this outcome was deliberately planned.”

“What?” Shepard’s head snaps around, and he can see who’s behind her: a humanoid synthetic, soft rays of daylight reflecting on her slate-gray frame, and a small asari whose hands are clasped before her face.

The synthetic’s smooth metallic features turn downward in contemplation, and she continues in EDI’s placid tone. “He possessed a ranged weapon, which obviated the need for hand-to-hand combat. However, he negated his advantage by engaging the opponent in close quarters, despite the opponent’s superior melee weaponry. In a synthetic, this behavior would be indicative of pre-programmed self-destruction.”

Thane is flooded by more memories, and more emotions, than he thought were left to him: the endless ache of being separated from Shepard, the resignation towards his own death, the clarity with which he had hurled himself towards the blade. Overshadowing it all is a towering, immovable sense of regret. 

“That’s bullshit,” he chokes, which is lie; he prays for forgiveness even as the words leave his mouth, and he swears to apologize to EDI if he ever gets the chance. “I don’t want to die.” That, however, is the truth.

“Of course you don’t.” Shepard turns back to him. Her hand, gentle even through the metal gauntlet, traces the grooves across his head. “That desert—you still haven’t seen it.”

“The target is accelerating at approximately three meters per second squared,” EDI continues, her attention now directed into the distance. “Immediate pursuit is advised.”

“I have time.” Thane lifts an arm. It’s the most taxing thing he has ever done. “Catch him.” His head begins to tip forward. 

She catches his chin in her palm. “I c—can’t walk away from you. How many times must I tell you that?”

“You have to go, Shepard,” says a quiet voice. It’s the first time that the asari has spoken. He knows he’s met her, but his thoughts are again escaping too quickly for him to make sense of them. She folds her arms across her chest, her cobalt-blue eyes narrow and hard.

Thane finds that he can’t blame her for taking the… What was it called? Long. The long view. 

“Liara, I _will not_ —”

“Go. Let me take care of Thane.”

Shepard stares up at her with the wide eyes of a child. “You know how to help?”

“No. But...”

Words continue, but they are lost to Thane as he falls upward into a roaring blackness, a tunnel whose walls are painted with crumbling phantoms of past and future: a frightened child, a white table, the sea. A lone thought is left to him, one that he can’t explain but that tears at the borders of his being: _Forgive me for all the praise that I have neglected to give._

 

* * *

 

The hospital is a sea of sounds—thrumming machines, moaning patients, rushed conversations—but all Thane can hear is the nurse’s voice as she recounts the story of how he came to be there.

“And _then_ someone going by—” she squints down at her omni-tool, “ _LawBringer SR2_ sent us these _incredibly_ detailed instructions about how to optimize our blood transfusion protocols for cases of extreme trauma. I’ve never seen anything like it! We didn’t believe it at first, but the asari that brought you here insisted that she could vouch for the protocol’s effectiveness and the source’s expertise.” She shakes her head. “Bringing people back from the dead must be a more common procedure than I thought. In any case, I wouldn’t want to get on that asari’s bad side.” The nurse shudders, but a tired grin spreads across her face. Thane suspects that this is one of the few positive stories that she has been able to tell today. 

She gives his vital signs one last awed look as she moves off to the next patient. “You have an awful lot of people in your corner, sir.”

Thane takes a breath. He has always felt that his body did not fully belong to him. But now, for the first time, this knowledge gives him a sense of responsibility and, surprisingly, peace. “I do. And… thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this snippet from Thane's voice actor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P-BF8KRU1E


End file.
